The Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC) is an 80-acre research, demonstration, advocacy and organizing center in Sonoma County, California. We live in a time of profound challenges that require immediate, courageous and strategic responses. We are confronted by global ecological and climate crises… OAEC supports diverse communities to design their own regenerative systems at the regional and local scale. OAEC supports change makers and communities to design for a resilient future.

There are other organizations like this one that are helping us plan specifically for our areas. Sometimes the processes of one situation can be used as a template, adapted for another area, the basic premises, sequences holding across the board.

As Veg Gardeners we are emissaries to all who would grow food! In a serious crisis, our skills may be called on to feed many people. Kollibri’s provocative article makes you think about how important our growing can be in these times of extreme climate situations.

Some of you may be permaculturists, already knowing about collaboration with the land, sustainability, self-reliance, having multiple support/backup systems. Others of you may be rank gardening beginners. Most of us are in progress. We need you all!

Kollibri’s experience is his. There are many stories to be told, many responses possible. Some of my thoughts and responses include:

Select safe land for your growing space carefully for the long term. Anticipate what changes you can, timing as possible. Have a backup plan in mind. Yes, there will be unanticipated events – a microburst storm, a devastating foreign insect coming through, huge hail where it hasn’t happened before, others.

Change your diet. In a crisis you might expect to let go of meat, diary, and grains, or reduce your intake dramatically. Instead of beef, raise fish or other animals, perhaps. Maybe your choice will be animals that provide milk and fur. How about chickens? They poop manure, scratch, eat insects, make eggs!

Learn about soil. Check out the soil chapter in the book Gaia’s Garden!

Plant efficient per square foot plants. Our small 10X20 Community Garden plots teach us that. Those plants can be high producers like zucchini, plants that produce prolifically all season long, or cut and come again types like lettuces and kales. In summer string beans are super producers – broad beans and long beans give you more bean for the space they take up!

Plant Perennial plants, like Tree Collards, for continuous crop all year and year after year.

If you have cold winters, plant potatoes that store well. In summer plant winter squashes that store well in winter. Set up an in-the-ground greenhouse to equalize seasonal temps.

Learn about Succession Planting. While one plant is growing, plant another round. Some plants are started every week.

Learn about Seed Saving so you allow time and space for that type of production as well.

Plant year round habitat for birds to keep pests down, and for bees and other pollinators to keep pollination going.

Check out what the indigenous ancestors in that area survived well on. Restore some of that process. It could be an efficient food forest. Could be ‘Tending the Wild,’ using edible native plants, as Kat Anderson writes about. If your land is hilly, terracing is a phenomenal and beautiful technique.

Plant plants that have over-the-top nutritional value like fast grower Garden Purslane, pur·sluhn, aka Verdolaga south of the border.

If you are planting for a family, consider the special food needs of children, people who are ill, elders. Plant herbs for medicine.

The Gardener’s New Emergency Kit Bag!

SEEDS A gardener’s emergency kit bag is a little different! It likely includes important select seeds for all seasons in an airtight container! Select some productive fast growers, like lettuce and radish (has edible leaves too), and ones of plants that produce all season long. Select bush and pole beans, determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. Select heat, drought and cold tolerant plant seeds. Some will grow earlier crops that produce in cool weather! Some survive heat, grow later and more healthily in fall. Some will survive frosts, even freezing. Be sure to have seeds for all seasons. Some areas, especially flooded areas, it isn’t recommended to grow edible plants there for at least one full season, so you need access to fresh soil and to be prepared for every season. Remember, you won’t be the only hungry people. Take as many seeds as possible. Seeds for flood soil restoration. Seeds for sprouts!

SOIL If you anticipate you would need ‘soil,’ whether you would be able to leave in a vehicle or intend to stay where you are, keep a couple or more bags of fresh clean compost around at all times. You can plant directly in compost. Remember, kitchen scraps can be processed to be used to make more compost. Think about including a lightweight folding shovel in your emergency kit.

What if you live in an apartment? Growing food in a north facing window system would be a challenge – not enough sun. If you have power, set up some grow lights. These days, thoughtfulness about your directional window placing could become vital. Install window solar power devices for when your power is off! Many a fine container garden has been planted in windows, on balconies, along the stairs, on the walls, a pallet leaning against the wall, in hanging baskets, on trellises made of strings or wire. Creativity abounds! Also grow tasty high protein sprouts!

Weather Crises are now unpredictable. The modern survivor needs to be prepared for any kind of emergency at any location, at any time.

IN a Crisis situation, burning heat, a water wipe out, an extended freeze, it’s over. What do you do? In a worst case scenario, there may no longer be a nursery or transplants at it. Most crops planted from seed take two+ months to get into production. Lettuce/Microgreens are really fast, but even they take about two weeks minimum. Radish, an incredibly fast grower, takes about a month. Transportation may be an issue. You may need to migrate to land that has plants to forage. Carry your lettuce plantings with you – wagon, cart, bicycle, grocery cart, sleep with them to protect them. You may become vegan for a while. You may not be happy, but you won’t die, probably will lose some weight! Succession planting becomes a necessity.

Always have an emergency backup supply of dry food for until your new plants become available to eat. Be sure your food supply takes up little space and weighs little. You want to be able to carry it comfortably if need be. In airtight/waterproof bags pack: Jerky, nuts, the least bulky dried vegs and fruits. Keep a ready lightweight waterproof backpack.

Heat – Maybe Drought, Fire

In a serious heat situation you may need to migrate north to a cooler higher land with access to clean water. Plant right away in a sheltered, perhaps shaded area, use shade cloth if you can get it, branches if you can’t. Choose a north facing slope for less sun. If there is no slope, build one as you can. Put up windbreaks to slow drying wind. If the soil is sandy, compost, compost, compost for water holding capacity. Bring seaweed from the ocean if you are coastal. Mulch to cool down the soil. If it is windy, put shade cloth or another cover to hold the mulch in place, especially if your land is sloped. The Zuni used ‘gravel,’ handpicked pebbles as ‘mulch’ in their waffle spaces. Use the old Zuni humble technique of Waffle gardening. They knew how to garden in heat! Simplest and cheapest is to set up an underground greenhouse to equalize seasonal temps. Make it the right size for your needs. Dig it right into the side of a hill or slope if possible. You want that shade and shelter for both you and the plants. Check out the Pros and cons of building bank barns? It can be improvised to suit a temporary immediate need, or planned to the inch if built on purpose…

In the most urban situations like New York City, use those balconies, the rooftops, a window! Just be sure the balcony or roof will support the additional weight of soil and water. Wherever you plant, choose highly productive plants per square foot. Pole beans on a trellis! Bush Zucchini. Cut-and-come-again plants like chard, celery, lettuce/microgreens, kales. Chard, celery and lettuce need a lot of water. Otherwise, choose plants that are heat and drought tolerant.

In the long term, plant more trees like fast grower legume trees that feed the soil and cool the Earth. Plant them in Bioswales that hold moisture. The trees make shade, hold even more moisture, secure the soil with their roots. If possible, start where there is an initial water supply.

Flood

This is no longer new to us, but it’s a dramatic example. 7.23.19: Less than a month after New York City declared a climate emergency due to a heat wave, the reality of the crisis came crashing home Monday as streets across Brooklyn and Queens were inundated with dirty water flash flooding a day after power went down in three boroughs. These New Yorkers aren’t going to be growing much of their own food right now. But, do what you can! Use those balconies, the rooftops, a window that receives sun. A LOT can be grown in small spaces! Choose apartments wisely – sun facing in case you need that sun.

Some consider floods to be worse than droughts. Flood soils are dangerous, mask and gloves needed when you do remediation. You may not be able to grow edible plants there for at least a season.

You don’t want to plant in low areas after a flood. There are sewage, oils, plastics, garbage, disease in that water – likely Giardia, sometimes dead animals and humans, their fecal matter, fecal matter from nearby animal/chicken farms. Afterwards there are decaying materials. The soil that remains may be infected for a long time to come. Your first tactic would be to plant quick growing detoxing grasses, sunflowers and other plants that remove crud. Grow plants that reach deep into the soil and loosen its structure. Turn the soil to off gas toxins and so dangerous soil organisms will dry and die. Incorporate fresh clean compost. See more ideas

Planting in lowlands, below dams or water barriers, may not be the wise choice these days. An unusual amount of fast high water can blast right through these structures. The face of agriculture is changing. Grains and corn may become unprofitable choices, equaling less beef, higher prices. Water may bring silt and fertile soil or fast flooding may wash away all the topsoil leaving nutritionless, even dirty, soil. For your personal situation, choose higher land. If needed, protect it with terracing, done with a combination of bioswales and Hugelkultur. Choose the cleanest soil you can find to plant in.

Soil Restoration Please see this List of Phytoremediation Plants Used to Clean Contaminated Soil. Alfalfa grows quickly. Sunflowers take longer but are pretty. Willow trees. Per Anita B. Stone ‘Indian Grass is one of nine members of grasses that assist in phytoremediation plants. When planted on farmland, the reduction of pesticides and herbicides is significant. This list also includes Buffalo grass and Western wheatgrass, both capable of absorbing hydrocarbons from the land.’ Be sure to grow grasses appropriate to your location, native grasses if possible. Put some alfalfa and grass seeds in your emergency kit!

Three things are important! 1) Install a ground cover of water absorbing plants to detox the soil if you must replant in areas that have flooded. 2) Plant quick growing legume soil feeding plants and trees to feed and restore the soil. 3) Include plants that will grow deep and break up that soil, that make breathing airways for soil organisms that will help clean up the soil.

In the long term, in non-urban areas, or urban areas that are interspersed with land, build bioswales that interrupt stormwater flow and divert it to areas that need water! Interrupt flooding with many bioswales – just like in nature. Remember these words: Slow, Sink, Spread! Put rough big materials in the bottom to slow that water down so it has time to sink. Cleverly make that bioswale curvy – install ‘S’ curves, to slow that water down! Make side branches, bulges along the way, and deltas to spread that water. Again, make generous stormwater retention ponds along the way.

Freezing or an Extended Period of Exceptional Cold

There may be no snow plow, cell service; electricity may be out. It’s not safe outdoors for humans or pets, farm animals, livestock. Fishing at the lake through an ice hole may be all that’s left, IF you have a lake, if it has fish…

In an immediate situation, a southern migration may be in order, preferably to land with a clean water supply. If you stay, go Vegan, at least temporarily. Building a greenhouse may be a challenge. We want warmer, to reduce wind chill. The ground may be frozen, so no underground greenhouse yet. But you can build along a south facing slope, even a snowbank! If there is no slope, build one. Gather and pile up any materials at hand. Make the face from wood panels, plastic sheets, old windows, even logs and branches can do the job. At each side put up permeable wind barriers that make a U shape with your ‘greenhouse’ and let the area inside the U warm up. Use any reflective materials you can find to reflect heat onto your greenhouse.

In the long term, well in advance, build a greenhouse. Such a greenhouse can be built in the ground during summer months when the soil can be worked. Homesteaders in -40° weather, used their garage and came to two prime conclusions. #1 is Insulation! No surprise. #2 was their water tanks, a thermal mass that kept their water buckets near the tanks from freezing solid! They needed water for their plants! You can put in stoves, showers, sleeping quarters! Store foods you want to be cold well away from the stove area. Clearly, light is needed. That’s why a greenhouse against a slope or a mound you make is a practical idea. The south facing side can have light allowing material slanted against it steeply enough the snow falls down. If you want to collect it to make water, all the easier. Depending on what you want to do, snow can act as insulation. See excellent tips at SF Gate: How to Keep a Greenhouse Above Freezing. When you can, install a self-sufficient Solar Power System for energy to keep your plants warm, lighted and growing.

Green Sprouts in the Canadian Arctic A unique “Green Igloo” project is helping grow fresh vegetables in a remote Inuit community! The 42-foot growing dome, built in modular sections, can handle seven feet of snow and winds up to 110 miles per hour.

Keep extra bags of compost/manure, to plant in while soil isn’t available. Grow cold-tolerant crops that can even tolerate a freeze. Harvest frugally. Plants grow slowly when it’s cold. Grow plants that regrow – like lettuces/microgreens, bunch onions, spinach, chard, Kales. Plant successively to keep supplies coming. While one plant is regrowing you can harvest another area.

We have now discussed Greenhouses for both heat and freeze temps needs. Underground greenhouses accommodate both situations with less difficulty. Just be sure to make them safe from flooding or snowmelt. Bioswales work well with planting more trees and diverting water, making more space for the natural flow of water.

We haven’t talked about SPROUTS! Technically, growing sprouts isn’t gardening, but it’s a relative! In all cases, Heat, Flood and Freeze they can be grown easily and super quickly, 2 to 5 days, in light weight containers. Select seeds that have plenty of protein! Make a fast growing mix and a slower mix. Mix in some spicy seeds for tasty results. You do need water to rinse them and they need to be kept warm. You could carry them in your jacket when it’s cold. In the diagram below, particularly note the grams of Protein!

Please right click on image, select ‘Search Google for image’ to see a more clear image.

If you are starting over, you might consider a Food Forest. If you have enough land with good soil, they have special advantages, including the possibility of mitigating crisis situations. Same goes for the use of Permaculture techniques, which might include a Food Forest. Food Forests often start with, may already have trees you want in place. They can provide shade and windbreaks. Wood for winter. Food Forests provide high density production per square foot, a variety of foods and living needs in a much smaller space! It would serve you well to read up on both and possibly modify your long term plans for a safer, more sustainable and comfortable life.

Not everyone likes or wants to garden. If you are evacuated, right away select a food person. Could be an experienced veg gardener who knows how to get things going again.They will work intuitively and be innovative on their feet as needed. Select someone who has a natural inclination. If no one in your group likes gardening, appoint someone responsible and practical to do it anyway. Give them your support by working side by side with them as much as possible. It’s a start. Some people don’t yet know they would like to garden! Show them what you are growing; give them a few samples of your 100% fresh organic food with no packaging! That full bodied taste and fresh texture makes a huge difference! Someone who loves gardening enjoys the work it takes. A greater amount of fresh food will need to be grown to meet initial crisis needs.

Some of us Community Gardeners are considering meeting together if there is a serious crisis and we would evacuate together if need be. We could help people with the food situation. Local permaculturists might form a group to help our community in extreme circumstances. They might train for different kinds of climate situations. We need Permaculture First Responders on staff! Farmers might join an advocacy association to train key gardeners about mass production techniques. Neighborhood associations could create a seat on the council for a person to get knowledgeable and take charge of crisis food needs. Certain centrally located secure homes could be appointed as gathering places. Homeowners that already have veg gardens could be assisted to produce more.

We have been talking about temporary survival fixes in extreme circumstances. The important key to all is responsible land stewardship toward regenerative agriculture. See Elemental Ecosystems’ immense Crater Garden Project in Gallatin, Montana!

Plan and support Regenerative Agriculture!

This post is intended to be provocative in its own way. Please think about it, let us know your ideas, make comments, ask questions, share your experiences. This has been in the back of my mind for some time and is still in progress. Our solutions now will undoubtedly change as circumstances change, unfold. It will take all our collective genius. People who have lived alone will find themselves suddenly thrust into collaborating. Life will be changing for all of us. We’re in it together.

Be safe, be well, tend your future just as you would your garden ~ it is a garden of another kind!

The Green Bean Connection newsletter started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA, Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. All three of Santa Barbara city community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Purple cauliflower has flavonoid compounds called anthocyanin, antioxidants. Steaming retains the most nutrition. Mark Twain once said, “Cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.”

Got some favorite old Italian heirloom Violetta Italia caulies at Terra Sol Nursery and a Cheddar, abundant with carotenoids, at ACE! Terra Sol had Cosmic Purple carrots too!
I’m trying Arcadia Broccoli because it is somewhat heat tolerant with excellent side shoot production.
Island Seed & Feed has the wonderful Harmony Four green manure seed mix and the inoculant that goes with it, plus a goodly batch of winter transplants including celery and some interesting peas!

Sad to report, no bare root strawberries anywhere. La Sumida usually has them when they reopen in January after the holidays. Sure hope so this year too!

Finally the SoCal HEAT is over!? Many of us at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden didn’t plant until the very end of October, and even then we had record high temps. Very delayed start this year. There will be fewer rounds of planting. Instead of leaving space available for a second round, this year I planted all the space right away. I’ll fill in as space becomes available ~ when the cabbage and cauliflower heads are harvested. I’m planting more kale and chard than I used to so I’ll have a quick supply of greens while waiting for the others. This late, plant transplants for sure. Seeds are fine, and seeds of the same plants, if planted at the same time as the transplants, give an automatic equivalent of a second round of planting!

Winter light is less, so your placement strategies are more critical. Remember, tall to the North and shaded areas, graduating down in size to the shorties South and sunny. For example, if your garden gets only morning sun, plant tall to the west, shorties on the east. Tall means at their mature height.

Tall

Pole peas on a trellis might be your backdrop, against a wall, along a fence. Plant carrots on the sunny side of peas to enhance the growth of your peas! I plant beets behind the peas because the beets are fast broadleaved growers that would shade out young peas or slow growing carrots. Peas like a lot of water, so though carrots from seed need to be kept moist, after that, too much water makes carrots split. So plant your carrots far enough from the peas so your carrots don’t get as much water as the peas do.

Brocs get tallest, some up to 5 feet+ unless you are planting dwarf/patio varieties.

Kales can get that tall and taller if you let them grow pom pom style. Even dwarf kales will do that! Given time, dwarfts revert to their natural size.

Plant your Tall plants in zig zag ‘rows’ so you can plant them closer together. In the inside of a zig zag, on the sunny side in front of the ‘back’ plant, put in your medium and shorties. Some gardeners call them fillers; I call some of them ‘littles.’

Medium

Chards are next, different varieties at varying heights, Fordhook Giants the tallest.

Celery by the water spigot. If you have room, you can let celery flower and seed too!

Shorties, Fillers, ‘Littles’

Bareroot Strawberries, transplant strawberry runner daughters first/second week of November if possible. They need ACIDIC compost mixed into their soil! Put them in spots for easy picking, lovely along borders. Keep them moist. When they start to fruit in spring, cover with aviary wire to keep out birds.

Heading winter lettuces like plenty of water to stay sweet, grow quickly, stay in high production. Put them in a low spot or near the spigot, on the sunny side of taller celery. Also, lettuces repel cabbage moths. Put a few of them between the cabbages and other Brassicas. Plant lettuces you want under Brassicas from transplants because dying parts of Brassicas put out a poison that prevents some seeds, like tiny lettuce seeds, from growing. Compost fallen Brassica leaves right away. In fact, remove yellowing leaves ASAP! Yellow attracts whiteflies.

Have fun with beets & carrots! They come in different shapes and lots of different colors. Try Danish heirloom Cylindra beets! Special tip from Hole’s: ‘Nearly two thirds of the length of the root will grow above ground, so some gardeners like to hill up soil around each plant as the root emerges. This will keep the skins of the root very tender and protect them from insects.’ True for any beet and a bit for carrots! Hilling up the soil keeps carrots from having those green shoulders.

Plant carrots, slow growers, on the sunny side of faster growing flat leaved plants like beets so the carrots won’t be shaded out. Colorful carrots brighten your winter stews! Baby Little Fingers make small carrots quicker than most, only 57 days to maturity! Put in multi colored Circus Circus!

GARLIC! Hmm…usually I would encourage you to grow garlic but with these general overall warmer times, some garlic lovers are reporting they aren’t growing it here anymore. Garlic likes chill, so even in our regular winters we don’t get the big cloves like up in Gilroy, the Garlic Capital, Ca. If you don’t mind smaller bulbs, plant away. Plant rounds of your fattest garlic cloves now through Dec 21, Winter Solstice, for June/July harvests! See a LOT about GARLIC!

Space your plants well. Think of the footprint of your mature plant. Crowded plants can shade each other out. They don’t get their full productive size or produce as productively, both size or quantity. Smaller plants too close together can get rootbound, suffer from lack of nutrition. The remedy is simple! Thin when young and eat these luscious little plants! Rather than planting so closely, keep some of those seeds back for another later planting. If they come that way from the nursery, gently separate the little plants, plant separately. Give away your extras! Plant to allow air flow so your plants will harden up a bit, and don’t overwater, inviting sucking pests like aphids and white flies that feed easily on soft tissue. Especially true for kales and chard that gets leaf miners. Ideally with chard the leaves won’t touch another chard.

Biodiversity Mix up your plantings to stop diseases and pests from spreading down a row or throughout a patch. Monoculture can be costly in time spent and crop losses. Plant different varieties of the same plant with different maturity dates. Pests and diseases are only attracted at certain stages of your plants’ growth.

Divide your artichokes! Give new babies plenty of room to grow big and make pups of their own or give them to friends! Remember, they have a huge 6′ footprint when they thrive and are at full maturity. Plant bareroot artichoke now or in Feb, or in March from pony packs. They have a 10 year life expectancy!

Strawberry Notes! Chandlers are June bearers. Sequoias are Everbearers. Seascapes are one of California’s own, released by the University of California breeding program in 1992. They are Day-Neutral, producing 3 months after planted no matter when you plant them! They produce spring, summer and fall, are heat tolerant and remarkably disease resistant! Seascapes, Albions and Sequoias have large berries, Albions very firm. Strawberry and onion varieties are region specific, strawberries more so than onions. So plant the varieties our local nurseries carry, farmers grow, or experiment! 1st half of Nov: Plant seeds of globeonions for slicing. Grano, Granex, Crystal Wax.

With the majority of fall crops, the main harvest is leaves! Cut and come again means a long harvest, and a very hungry plant! So, plant in super soil to get a good start! Add composts, manures, worm castings. In the planting hole, mix in a handful of nonfat powdered milk in for immediate uptake as a natural germicide and to boost their immune system. For bloomers, brocs and caulis, throw in a handful of bone meal for later uptake at bloom time. If you have other treats you like to favor your plants with, give them some of that too! Go lightly on incorporating coffee grounds either in your compost or soil. Studies found coffee grounds work well at only 0.5 percent of the compost mix. That’s only 1/2 a percent! See more details about soil building! The exception is carrots! Too much good soil makes them hairy, fork, and too much water makes them split.

Also at transplant time, sprinkle mycorrhizal fungi directly on transplant roots! Pat it on gently so it stays there. Direct contact is needed. Brassicas don’t mingle with the fungi and peas may have low need for it, so no need to use it on them.

Immediately after transplanting, give your babies a boost! Drench young plants with Aspirin Solution, + a 1/4 cup nonfat powdered milk, heaping tablespoon of baking soda, teaspoon liquid dish soap per gallon/watering can, to get them off to a great start! Do this the same or next day! Reapply every 10 days or so, and after significant rains.

Winter plants need additional feeding, and steady adequate moisture to stay healthy and able in such demanding constant production. Give them yummy compost to keep their soil fluffy with oxygen, the water holding capacity up to par. Be careful not to damage main roots. Get a spade fork if you don’t have one. Make holes in your soil instead, then, if you don’t have skunks or other digging predators, pour them a fish/kelp emulsion cocktail! Or compost, manure, or worm cast tea down the holes. Your plants will thrive, soil organisms will party down!

RESTORE OR REST an area. Decide where you will plant your tomatoes, heavy feeders, next summer and plant your Green Manure there! Plant some hefty favas or a vetch mix for green manures to boost soil Nitrogen. The vetch mix can include Austrian peas and bell beans that feed the soil, and oats that have deep roots to break up the soil. When they start flowering, chop them down into small pieces and turn them under. Wait 2 or more weeks, plant! Favas only are good and big, you get a lot of green manure per square foot. If you change your mind, you can eat them!

Or cover an area you won’t be planting with a good 6″ to a foot deep of mulch/straw and simply let the herds of soil organisms do their work over winter. This is called Lasagna gardening, sheet composting or composting in place – no turning or having to move it when it’s finished. If you are vermicomposting, have worms, add a few handfuls to speed up and enrich the process. Keep it slightly moist. Next spring you will have rich nutritious soil for no work at all!

Mulch? The purpose for mulch in summer is to keep your soil cool and moist. If you live where it snows, deep mulch may keep your soil from freezing so soon. But when SoCal temps start to cool, days are shorter, it’s time to remove mulch and let what Sun there is heat up the soil as it can. When it is rainy, mulch slopes with mulch that won’t blow or float away. If needed, cover it – garden staple down some scrap pieces of hardware cloth, cut-to-fit wire fencing or that green plastic poultry fencing. Or do a little quick sandbag terracing. Low to the ground leaf crops like lettuce, arugula, spinach, bok choy, chard, need protection from mud splash. Lay down some straw before predicted storms. If you live in a windy area, lay something over the straw, like maybe rebar pieces, to hold the straw in place.

This SoCal winterEl Niño rain is predicted. Plant where there is good drainage. Make above ground beds. If you built berms that hold in too much water, open a low spot to let water out. At home, make water collection areas, channel the water to your fruit trees. Securely stake tall or top heavy plants before winds. Tie your peas to their trellis or plant them inside well-staked remesh round cages. Check on everything the morning after. Some areas may need more shelter and you could create a straw bale border, or even better, low growing bushes, like maybe blueberries! Lay down seedless straw, a board, or stepping stone pathways so your footwear doesn’t get muddy. Treat yourself to some fab muck boots! (Sloggers)

BEE FOOD! Plant wildflowers now from seed for early spring flowers! Germination in cooler weather takes longer, so don’t let the bed dry out. If you are a seed ball person, fling them far and wide, though not on steep slopes where they simply wash away. What is a seed ball?

The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. We are very coastal, during late spring/summer in a fog belt/marine layer area most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!

Food Not Lawns is all about raising veggies not grass. Studies show they both take about the same amount of water, but veggies pay back sustainably with fresh highly nutritious food on your table and no-food-miles or pollution. Plus they make seeds for their next generation, adapting to your microclimate niche! http://www.sbfoodnotlawns.org

Do I have to rip up my lawn? You can do lasagna gardening/sheet composting right on top, start with cardboard/newspaper.

Do I have to do a major portion of my lawn? You can do any part you want, big or small, your call!

But I don’t want to do my front lawn. You don’t have to! It’s yours, do what makes you happy! You only need 6 to 8 hours of sun to grow veggies, any space, corridor that has that, works.

Is it really hard work? Using the lasagna/sheet composting method is no harder than gathering the materials to do it! There is NO DIGGING! And you don’t have to build raised beds. Building soil on top of your lawn can make a lovely undulating landscape. Frameless raised beds have plantable sloped sides!

Is it ugly? Could be, but how you do it is up to you! It can be integrated along/among border landscaping plants, you don’t have to have raised beds at all. If you want to though, you can make really attractive raised beds with beautiful materials, ie a lovely rock wall, terracing. You can cover an unsightly area like the edge under a south facing deck. There are so many lovely options!

I don’t want to wait months before I can plant!You can plant the same day! Just pull back a planting hole, throw in compost, bought or made by you, plus any amendments you want, just like usual, and plant NOW! No waiting at all!

Wet green layers go above dry browns so the juicy decomposing stuff seeps down, keeping the brown stuff moist! Straw is good in a brown/dry layer because air can pass through it, keeping the pile aerated! Throw in some red wriggler worms to work the pile, make castings! Maybe toss in some soil to ‘innoculate’ the pile with soil organisms.

Don’t worry overmuch about exactness of ingredients in your layers as you chop and drop greens from your garden/yard. In fact, you can mix them up! But do put in manures for Nitrogen (N). Decomposing plants use N to decompose, so add a little so your growing plants will have an adequate supply.

If you can, make your pile at least 18” high; it is going to sink down as it decomposes. Thinner layers, or layers that have been mixed, and smaller pieces, decompose faster.

If you like, cover the whole pile with some pretty mulch when you are done! Or tarp it to keep things moist until ready for use.

When you plant, especially in ‘new’ soil, sprinkle the roots of your transplants with mycorrhizal fungi! The fungi make micro filaments throughout your soil that increase your plants’ uptake of minerals, especially phosphorus that builds strong roots and increases blooming, fruiting!

Anybody can lasagna garden/sheet compost in any garden, any part of a garden, any or all the time! It’s a time honored soil building/restoration technique! Happy planting!

FIRST WEEK OF MARCH!

Tasty Provider Beans, Powdery Mildew Resistant

Go get your seeds, transplants, any amendments that make you happy, clear your space, and go for it! Poke bean seeds in at the base of finishing peas, tomatoes, artichokes from transplants, corn, New Zealand spinach, cucumbers, summer and winter squash! [Pilgrim Terrace gardeners, those of you in the lottery section this year, get your winter squash in early so they have plenty of time to mature and harden on the vine.] If you have room and want to, plant last rounds of cool-season crops – broccoli (with cilantro & lettuce), cabbage, potatoes. Add more year-rounds, beets, carrots, chard, bunch onions, radish, turnips. Remember to leave space for your succession plantings!

True heat lovers next month – eggplant, limas, melons, okra, peppers and pumpkins. Wait, wait…you can do it. Unless you live in the foothills with a south facing wall, many wait to plant tomatoes until next month. That means if you haven’t already, get those babies started in the greenhouse to get a head start!

Keep in mind our June gloom that we had all summer last year. Think about planting heat lovers within a south facing ‘U’ shape of taller plants to give them more captured heat. The sides of the U act as a windbreak, and hold the heat in. You could wedge the U sides a little, angled like outspread wings. Maybe get more determinate toms, with different dates to maturity so you have a steady supply. The shorter determinates will be closer to the ground in your U shape ‘enclosure,’ and the whole plant will stay warmer. Be careful to plant far enough apart that the tomato leaves aren’t touching, lessening the spread of Verticillium and Fusarium wilts. Eggplants may especially like this warm U shaped environment because they like a little humidity. Plant them closer to the plants behind them so they can snuggle happily. If you plant in rows, stagger them one plant in from the end of a row. The outmost/endmost plants are usually drier. Just like with strawberries, don’t plant them right near a hot wicking wood bordered edge. The board heats, dries the neighboring soil. Strawberries like water, good drainage, not dry baked roots.

Or if you anticipate a coolish summer, just love winter plants, keep planting them!

Plant flowers, chamomile for tea, poppy for seeds, veggie starts (hot peppers), to give as Mother’s Day living gifts! That’s 9 weeks from now. Plant a little extra all the time for ready gifts for any occasion!

Happy October, Month of Magic!

The next months…so you can plan ahead!

October Transplants of all fall crops, but specially of cabbages and artichokes. Cut Strawberry runners off to chill for Nov planting.November Seeds of onions for slicing. Wildflowers from seed (don’t let the bed dry out). Strawberries in no later than Nov 5. More transplants of winter veggies.December is winter’s June! Crops are starting to come in, it’s maintenance time!

My campaign this fall is for garden cleanup, and turning the soil to expose the fungi that affects our tomatoes, and other plants, so the fungi dries and dies!

Winter weather? Bring it on! Starting to cool down now! Your plants will grow fast then start to slow down. Less weeds and insects. Aphids & White Flies are a winter crop problem (see below please). Some people prefer the cool slower pace of winter gardening to the more phrenetic hot summer labor and work of big harvests, distribution, storage. Harvesting cold hardy vegetables after they have been hit with a touch of frost can enhance the flavor and increase the sweetness of greens such as kale and collards.

Extend the crop! Cut and come again! Harvest your big greens – kale and collards, and lettuces leaf by leaf rather than cutting your plant down. Many lettuces will ‘come back’ even if you cut them off an inch or two above ground. Leave the stalk in the ground, see what happens! Rather than pulling your bunch/table onions, cut them off about an inch to 2 inches above the ground. They will come back 3 to 4 times. Leave a potato in the ground to make more potatoes. After you cut the main broccoli head off, let the side sprouts grow and snip them for your salads or steam them. Cabbages? Cut off right below the head, then let them resprout, forming several smaller heads at the leaf axils.

If you are a new gardener at Pilgrim Terrace, ask other gardeners, or the previous person who had your plot, how the soil was tended. Some plots may need no amending, others may need a lot. Add compost, manures, seaweeds, worm castings as needed. Some people do the whole garden at once, others conserve valuable materials by preparing only where they will specifically plant, for example, a large plant like a broc. If it is a lettuce bed that you will do repeated plantings in, you might opt to do the whole bed at once.

Since mulch keeps the soil cool, some people pull it to the side in winter, to let the sun heat the soil on cool days.

Simple soil test! Test the soil by putting a drop of vinegar in a teaspoon or so. If it fizzes, it’s too alkaline. Then test it by putting in baking soda mixed with a little water. If it fizzes, it’s too acidic.

Garden Design

In addition to planting your veggies, plan ahead to plant flowers, to always have some in bloom, to attract pollinators. Borage is a lovely plant, blooms all year, has purple blue star flowers that are edible and good for you! Toss a few on top of your salads!

Make habitat! Plants for beneficial insects, poles for birds, rocks for lizards!

Plant tall in the North, the mountain end of our plots; plant shorties in the South. This is especially important in our winter gardens because of the low sun long shadows.

Put plants together that will be used in the same way, for example, salad plants like lettuces, bunch onions, celery, cilantro.

Biodiversity. Planting the same kind of plant in different places throughout your garden. It can be more effective that row cropping or putting all of one plant in one place, where if disease or a pest comes, you lose them all as the disease or pest spreads from one to all.

Layering example: Transplant peas at the base of any beans you still have.

Use vigorous fresh seeds, choose vibrant not-fruiting transplants that preferably aren’t root bound (having a solid mass of roots). If the transplant is pretty big for the container, pop it out of the container to make sure it isn’t root bound. If it is the only one there, and you still want it, can’t wait, see what John R. King, Jr (2 min video) has to say on how to rehabilitate your plant!

Lay down some Sluggo (See Slugs & Snails below) right away, even before seedlings sprout, when you put your transplants in, so your plant isn’t overnight snail and slug smorgasbord!

Strawberry Runners! Mid Oct cut off runners, gently dig up if they have rooted, shake the soil off. Clip all but two or three leaves off, tie ‘em together in loose bunches. Plastic bag them and put in the back of your fridge for 20 days. Plant them Nov 5 to 10! Prechilling your plants makes them think they had a cold winter. When days get longer and warmer, they will produce fruit, not as much vegetative growth. You can then either keep your plants that produced this year, or remove and compost them, start fresh with new plants!

Watering – Morning when you can because plants drink during the day, and we want them to dry so they don’t mildew! Water underneath, especially late beans, and your new peas, who are especially susceptible to mildew. Except for your short and shallow rooted plants, once a week and deeply is good unless there is a hot spell or rain. Then, check ’em. Poke a stick in the ground to see if the soil is moist under the surface.